RADIO ASTRONOMY 2016

Exercise 2

Upload your solutions into MyCourses by Thursday, November 3rd until noon. The exercise session
will be held on the same day, 14:15-16:00 at the Simulointilaboratorio, HTC. Otaniementie 19.

Problem 1

Galactic Radio Astronomy

a) Which frecuency or frecuencies would you use for studying the structure of our galaxy? Justify
your answer. 1p.

b) The arrival time T of a signal from a distant source depends on the dispersion of plasma as

T = d/c + D/f 2 ,

where d is the distance to the source, f the frequency of the signal, c the speed of light and D the so-
called dispersion measure:

e is the electron charge, me the electron mass, ϵo permittivity of free space and ne the electron density.
Consider a pulsar from which a signal at 100 MHz arrives 2 s later than the signal at 200 MHz.
Assuming the density of the interstellar plasma to be 0.03 cm −3 calculate the distance to the pulsar. 4p
Bonus exercise: Calculate further the Faraday rotation of the wave assuming a linear polarization and
0.1 nT interstellar magnetic field 2p. Please do not forget about the units in SI.

Problem 2

Single Dish Radio Astronomy: Quasar observations

a) You are about to observe the quasar 2145+067 (Ra.21:48:05.460, Dec.+06:57:38.600) at 37 GHz
with the Radio Antenna (D=13.7m, aperture efficiency η=0.55, beam efficiency ϵM =0.67) at Metsähovi.
A colleague previously informed you that the quasar has a observed flux density of 2.2 Jy. Calculate the
observation time τ for observing the source. We expect a signal to noise ratio (S/N) to be 5. Additional
information can be found on tables 1 and 2. (Hint: you will need to calculate the efective area) 4p.

Receiver Signal freq. IF freq. [GHz] Polarization Treceiver [K] Type of

[GHz] receiver, ks
37 GHz 35.3-36.3
Continuum 0.5-1.5 Linear ~ 280 2
37 GHz 37.3-38.3
Solar
Table 1. Receiver properties.
 TCMB,background Tsky Tsidelobes Twiring, etc Tcal
3K 17 K 6K 21 K 3.4 K
Table 2. Aproximated values in Metsähovi.

Problem 3

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN).

a) Explain in your words, what is spectral energy distribution (SED) ? 1p

b) What is the cosmological redshift (z) ?, and how it is calculated? 1p

c) How the cosmological redshift of an object is related to its distance? (hint: Hubble's Law) 1p

d) We saw that active galaxies have a different behaviour in comparison to normal galaxies. The
following SEDs present two galaxies and two AGN. Search about their classification and write
some differences that you can identify in the SEDs. 2p (Hint: Wikipedia can give you a quick
help for finding their classification, and just a short sentence about each SED is necessary.)

I. SED: ESO 325-G004 II. SED: Messier 077

III. SED: Messier 096 IV. SED: PKS 1934-63

e) We saw that AGN are particularly far from the observer. Figure 1 presents the rest frame spectra
of an AGN in the optical domain. In addition, three emission lines are marked with their rest
(observed) wavelengths. From figure 2 identify the same lines in the spectrum that is
redshifted, then using table 1 identify the observed wavelengths for H β , [OIII], and Hα . Finally,
give an approximated distance to the AGN. 4p

Figure 1. Spectra of a reference AGN with its spectral lines in the rest frame.

Figure 2. Spectra of an AGN that is redshifted.

 Line Wavelength (Å)
1 4502.98
2 4671.97
3 5872.189
4 5989.63
5 6046.444
6 7912.25
7 7926.838
8 7952.433
9 8111.478
10 8132.049
Table 1. Important lines and their observed wavelengths.